Our friends over at Stockcharts.com asked me to put together a short video on the most important theme of 2021.

For me, it's hard to ignore how breadth deterioration throughout the most the year impacted sentiment. This summer, the extreme levels of bullishness among individual investors and financial advisors became a headwind for stocks.

After the prices of those stocks deteriorated further into the Fall, that sentiment flipped to the opposite extreme. We came into December 2021 with the most bears in over a year and fewest bulls since April 2020.

As we enter 2022, sentiment is very different than how things looked entering 2020 and 2021.

By my work, this time is different. Very different.

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."

Many of you are already familiar with this popular market adage as it is a commonly used quip in our industry.

All it really means is that you can't get something for nothing from the market.

Have you ever bought a high-yielding stock for the dividend and rode it into a big drawdown just for them to announce they're cutting the payout?

Did you listen to a friend about a biotech stock that was supposed to rip higher on positive FDA results... but it actually gapped lower?

How about following the analyst community into a stock that was a consensus buy... until it turned out not to be?

In all of these scenarios, the investor is simply looking for a free lunch. And 9 times out of 10, these situations don't work out. There are no easy investments or get-rich-quick tricks on wall street. At least not sustainable ones. You have to put in the work.

One rule that I live by for my own investing is this: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as a market of stocks.

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions… but there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club. We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

The point is that we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports. Now, we’re also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We've been talking about how the major strength in the current market has been coming through in IT. But what we also noticed is that while Nifty Pharma wasn't looking pretty on an absolute basis, the relative strength is pointing in a different direction.

Pharma has been gaining our attention for the past few weeks. This post will see if broad participation is back in Pharma or just a few value weightage stocks are gaining higher.

Today we're introducing a new series of posts that we will include in our general analysis.

We're calling this the BASH Series. What does this mean and what do we do?

We look at stocks in the market that are experiencing extreme moves, and we share our views. So we will tell you what we'd do: Buy, Avoid, Sell, or Hold. And that's how we arrive at BASH (you have to make acronyms that make a word. Just sticks better, so bear with it. Haha!)

Today we're here to discuss RBL Bank Bank. So let's do just that.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 24, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow. In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish… but NOT both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients. Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

Wall Street sell side analysts are coming out with their 2022 forecasts.

And we all know how accurate those tend to be ;)

In the latest float of the bear parade, wall street's sell side analysts are putting out some of the most bearish forecasts in recent memory.

From the WSJ,

And we already know that Individual investors (AAII) and Financial Advisors (II) are much more bearish going into 2022 than they were over the prior two years.

This week we’re looking at a long setup in the market's favourite bullish space, IT.

IT has been displaying strength even in a sideways market. Such strength is crucial to note.

Let's take a look at what we have today!

As we enter the final week of the year, what's on your mind?

Let us know. We love to hear from you!

I'll go first.

People are so scared. They're afraid of their own shadows.

And they're quick to blame others instead of looking in the mirror.

At first glance, this might seem sad. But sad for who?

Just because you're angry doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.

I see it as opportunity.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 50 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs. We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market-cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more -- but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the 50 largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list: